Sometime the night before while getting ready for bed in our palatial hotel room, I discovered the awful truth about New Zealand television--it only shows rugby. There are only about four or five broadcast stations in New Zealand, and on that night three of them were each showing a *different* rugby game. I counted something like 10 or 12 channels in all, but most of those were sattelite feeds from other countries.

In a country of only three million people, exactly how many rugby leagues and teams do they *have*? How often do they play? In the US, we play football (or, as the Europeans call it, "Not Soccer") and they only play for 16 weeks out of the year, and then only once a week for each team (most teams play on Sunday, at least two play on Monday night, and sometimes there is a Thursday night game). Follow that with a four or five week post season, and you're still only likely to catch a football game on TV two days out of the week for only half the year. We've only got one major football league in a country of 300 million people,(the XFL might count if they didn't currently have the lowest rated show in the history of prime time television) and, not counting college football (which would add a game or three on Saturday afternoon) you're not likely at any one time to flip on the TV and find THREE different football games taking place on any random night of the week.

The strangest part about it was that the next day at lunch, there was another rugby game on the TV in the cafe! It was madness. The only thing I can compare it to here is baseball, which plays a 162 game schedule over 7 months of the year, so at any random time between April and October there's a good chance of there being a professional baseball game going on somewhere in the country. But you're still not likely to find three *different* games being televised at any one time, for the most part. And baseball is completely non-contact, so they *can* play an insanely long schedule like that.

Of course, if I had my preference of games, I wouldn't pick either American football *or* rugby, I'd pick Australian Rules football. There's never been a more insane game than that--I used to think rugby was rough and had lots of action until I saw a few games of Aussie rules football. That's one sport I wish we would import here. Screw soccer, that's got to be the most boring game on the planet. Lets get an Australian rules football league together!

So it was day three, and we did some stuff. Walking down into that volcanic valley was much more exciting knowing that there was a BUS at the end that would take me back up to the top. The most interesting thing about the area is that it is one of the only (perhaps *the* only) places in the world where volcanic and geothermal activity and formations of this type can have its beginning pinpointed exactly--June 10th, 1886, and the eruption of Mt. Tarawera. All of the features of this valley can be traced to that day or days of activity since then, since all other formations and features from previous eruptions were erased in the 1886 eruption.

To say that we saw lakes of acid is sort of a misleading statement. What we saw were ponds and streams of acidic water. I believe one of the signs said that the water in one particular pool had a pH of 2.1. The pH scale is a funky logarithmic scale that goes from 0 to 14. 7 is neutral, which is what water normally is. The lower the number, the more acidic the solution, and the higher the number, the more basic the solution. A pH of 2.1 sounds pretty acidic until you realize that that is about the same acidity as lemon juice. Not something I'd want to swim in, but not something that's going to melt the flesh from your bones, either. Which is kind of unfortunate, since I was hoping that I'd be able to burn sticks and stuff in the acid streams.

The steam rising from all the water was incredible. I took several pictures of this (which I'll share later) and it's just a remarkable sight. Water isn't SUPPOSED to boil when it's flowing downstream! Also, it's not supposed to smell like rotten eggs, either. Bleh.

The lake at the end of the trek was gorgeous as well, and I wish we had had the time or the inclination to take the boat tour that was offered there. The views of the lake and Mt. Tarawera were spectacular. I have pictures of that to share too, when I finally sort everything out.

We divided our day equally between basic sightseeing and insanely careening down mountains at break-neck speed. I liked the latter better, although the former was much safer.

I learned two things of major importance on day 3. One, Brunnen-G is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the coolest woman I have ever met in my entire life. And two, it only takes ONE bad day to get a reputation that sticks with you throughout a trip.

First, in regards to issue number one--never in my life have a met a woman who not only likes SF, bad movies, James Bond, climbing things that need climbing (such as rock walls, trees, etc.), horses, driving fast down narrow roads with tall plant life on either side, and just generally being cool, but *also* thinks that careening down the side of a mountain on a little narrow sled thing with wheels is "cool fun" because you can go really fast and catch air on the bumps. As I said to Sam later in the trip, they just don't make women like that in the US.

As far as issue number two goes... Ok, so I fell off the luge and the sidewinder. Actually, it was three times on the luge and twice on the sidewinder. I got pretty banged up. But that's pretty much the ONLY thing I "fell off" on the entire trip. Sheesh, a guy has one bad day and he's ridiculed for it forever.

Of course, it *was* a spectacularly bad day, I must admit. We started on the luge, and for the first run of the day they make you take the scenic route. The scenic route is less steep, less direct, less dangerous, and less fun. I only fell off once. In my defense, I'm a tall person, and those luge sled things weren't MADE for tall people. You had to pull back on the handlebars to brake, and whenever I pulled back on the handlebars, before any real "braking" could occur, the handelbars hit my shins. So I was constantly trying to scoot back in the sled so I could have more room to pull back and brake. But there *wasn't* any more room in the sled, so I just had to mash the handelbars against my shins painfully to have any HOPE of slowing down.

The first time I fell off was on the scenic route on the first run. It was at a place where there was a rather sharp 'S' curve, and I turned *too* sharply (pretty much the only time I had that problem) and the sled tilted to the left, the left front next to the front wheel(s?) hit the ground, and I sort of plopped over onto my side. I got back on and went down the rest of the way.

I didn't fall off at all on my first trip down the advanced course. We then took our free rides on the sidewinder.

The sidewinder was incredibly lame, as the ride attendant freely admited to us. "Are you looking for thrills and excitement!?" he asked us. "Well, there's none here, this is our slowest ride." Good marketing there. A few people went ahead of me (I think Sam, Leen, and BG all went ahead of me) and they told me how lame it was. Brunnen-G said I didn't have to bother braking because it was so slow.

After sitting for about five minutes in the cramped sled on the conveyor belt waiting while the ride attendant screwed around with the other sleds down below, I was finally off. I careened down the mountain, leaning with the corners like I was told. Actually, I'm still not certain what I was told. I thought the guy said something like "Lean into the corner" which to *me* means to lean in the *opposite* direction that the corner is going, because the corner is banked and to lean "into" it you need to lean *towards* it, which means if you're turning left you lean right. However, I think he then said something like "if you're going left lean left," which to me is leaning WITH the corner, not *into* it. But whatever. I think I would have fallen off no matter which way I leaned.

I didn't want to seem like a wuss, so I wasn't bothering to brake. Bad mistake. I came into one especially sharp corner, leaned "with" the corner, and the sled just flew out from underneath me. I actually had to pull it back onto the track to get back on it. Everyone else complained about how slow the thing was, and here I was nearly flying out of the track because I was going too fast.

I got going again, and then came to another especially sharp corner. This time, I decided I had better brake, so I did, and leaned with the corner--and again, the sled came out from underneath me and I slid on my side down the rough metal track for about five feet. So braking didn't help, either.

I was so near the end of the track at this point that I had to push myself to the end, and I ended up looking like wuss boy number one when I came back into view of the others, pushing myself along just to get to the end. Needless to say, the sidewinder was my *least* favorite part of the whole two weeks in New Zealand.

Nobody could believe I had fallen off not once but TWICE. Everyone was complaining about how slow it was, and here *I* was saying I had been going too fast around corners and fallen off. Yeah, it made me feel real good.

So I was happy to get back on the luge after that. However, my last three runs on the luge turned out to be even worse than my one run on the sidewinder.

My third luge run started me off on a bad note, and set the tone for the last two. There was a part on the advanced course where you could choose two slightly different routes, which were separated by some weird sort of plastic island. I had been taking the high route because it was easier for me to steer around, but this time I decided to take the low route since it would be faster. But I couldn't make the corner--I could barely brake *or* steer on those stupid luge sleds, so instead of taking the low route I instead careened crazily right OVER the island separating the two routes. I managed not to fall off, but it was pretty scary for a minute, since I was going pretty fast and that plastic/rubber stuff didn't look very soft or forgiving.

I slammed into the side on one of the sharp corners on my fourth run, but managed to stay on. However, I was getting sick of going really slow through the last part of the course--you had to maintain a decent speed when you got to the bottom part of the course because it was fairly flat and if you didn't have much speed you'd just poke along until you got to the end. Which is exactly what I'd been doing on all of my runs, since I invariably would smack into the edge of a corner or tip the car a little so the edge would strike the ground and slow me down and I'd have no speed for the bottom part of the course.

So on my last run, I vowed to have some speed for the bottom of the course. I had problems braking anyway, so this shouldn't have been a problem. However, on my last run, I also developed a severe problem steering. I slammed hard into a corner and fell off, scraping my left arm and leg a bit. This was right before it was getting to the flat part, so I knew I had to really go fast so I wouldn't have to poke through the flats again.

I came screaming down the rest of the course, hoping to make it through the flats without being slow again. However, I had forgotten about the last sharp corner before the flat part. The course banked sharply to the right on a grassy hill before coming around again more gently to the left and going down the flat parts of the course.

I knew I was in trouble on my approach to the corner, because I couldn't seem to steer at all anymore. And I pulled back hard on the handlebars, but all that did was bruise my shins and slow me down only a hair. I didn't even come CLOSE to making that corner--instead I FLEW off it like a jump and sailed over the grassy hill and slid down the opposite bank on my side. I ended up a good 20 feet off the track, nearly into the trees. I lay there for a bit, wondering why I even bothered to try to have fun on rides built for short people. Then I got back up and slowly dragged my luge sled back up the hill and onto the track, nearly getting killed by several people screaming around the corner I'd flown off of.

Despite my best efforts, I poked the slowest down the flats on my last run, and got to stand there and explain to everyone why I was so late in getting down. We took the chairlift back up to the top and I went to the first aid center to try to wash some of the dirt and grass out of my wounds. My knee was cut and the side of my right arm was bleeding from the abrasions. But while I was sitting in the first aid shack being attended to by the first aid dude, this japanese tourist guy came up with his hands and knees covered in blood. We figured he'd done what the sign at the beginning of the course told him not to, and put the sled in park and flown over the handlebars onto the asphalt. So, embarassed again at taking up space in the first aid shack with wounds obviously less serious than the guy behind me, I left and we took the gondolas back to the bottom.

We had dinner and good conversation at a chinese restaurant that night, and even though I didn't fall off anything else of significance for the entire trip, this one day branded me forever as "The guy who falls off things." :-(

-- Dave